Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclo-pidia.
Oh Lydia The Champ of them all.
She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet.
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat.
And now the old boy's in command of the fleet,
for he went and married Lydia!

I was listening to Michael Feinstein and, well, my childhood came rushing back and smacked me in the sketchbook.

okay, I see the ships on her hips
and I see that on her back is the battle of waterloo
and beside it the wreck of the Hesperis, too?
I don't see proudly above it the Red White and Blue.
But I did learn a lot from Lydia.
La la la.
La la la.

i adore this song! i grew up on it. and there were all those fun verses that had to be left out. i distinctly remember singing it to myself at school in like 4th grade and people looking at me like i was a total nut case. great job!!!!

I had to stop and comment on this one! Besides the fact that it is a beautiful piece... which it is! I saw the title Lydia and thought, "that couldn't possibly be what I think it is," and it was... I know this song! My buddy and I have sung it at a couple of cabarets! Hysterically funny when it was originally done by Groucho Marx. And I just love the fact that you illustrated it!

Wait a sec...I thought we were supposed to be drawing women all skinny and spindly nowadays; like a twelve-year-old boy with a boob job. This thing you've drawn looks like...well, frankly it looks like a woman. What's up with that?

I love the Hirschfeldian lines. I'm a big Marx bros. fan, and I remember Groucho singing that song. So I had to check this out. Now I gotta fave it.

I love the way the red stands out against the sketch. It almost reminds me of *flashback* when you were little, and you'd draw something totally amazing and you loved it to death and showed everyone, then your cousin or someone would come along and draw all over it. This picture is much more contained I agree with :ESDA06: though, blue might have been less harsh on the eyes.

An art class near mine came in yesterday with a bunch of sketches of a male nude. I never realized just how beautiful the human body could be, I see it so often concealed under folds of cloth (though I admittedly love drawing folds). Their pictures were beautiful, but not one captured the weight and sheer simplicity you've captured in this piece.
My only suggestion would be to think about doing the tattoos in blue next time. Blue is a less radical color, more sensuous and distracts less from the beautiful body lines. Plus, red tends to reminds me of wounds and highly emotional states. The woman's expression is the opposite of the red emotion, being serene and even somewhat arrogant. Unless that was your intention in choosing red, in which case BRAVO nice juxtaposition.

Well phrased- I was going for a juxtaposition of the chaos of the design against the natural fluidity of the linework, so I suppose red did me well in that case, but that was a beautifully articulated point. Thankye!

*snerks* I just finished Jim Butcher's "Grave Peril", in which there is a girl called Lydia who has a small tattoo. I giggled out loud when I noticed it, and now here's the second reference in one night!

I drew something like that once - a chick with tattoos all over her body (all line-like and tribally like that, too).

Wonderful stuff. I love the stylization of this and how angular everything is. Everything has a nice, defined weight to it and a very smooth flow to it. I especially like her hands, her rear, and her face. It's all so shapey, which compliments the tattoos nicely.

Good good stuff. I see a ship, an Egyptian eye, a dragon-type animal, a fish, a star, a dude on a horse, a flag/banner... maybe something the looks like a palm tree or the Eiffel Tower...